Black and White
by zaraX
Summary: "Are you angry with me?" "…No. And I still don't think you were a bad person. I think you just had a lot of people in your life that made you do bad things." / In which Draco and Scorpius have a conversation about Draco's past.


"Scorpius?"

His fingers clenched around the edges of the thin photograph, and he kept his head bent, determined not to acknowledge _him._

"Scorpius," his father sighed. Floorboards protested as footsteps grew louder. "Please, son. Put that away."

Scorpius brushed a few strands of hair out of his eyes and shook his head, feeling somewhat childish for an eleven year old, but justifiably so. His gaze burned into the black and white image. It wasn't fair; why hadn't they shown - why hadn't they at least _told _him - did they think he was too stupid to understand?

"Why did you hide all these from me?" he blurted out, finally turning around to face his father, who was staring at the photo in his hands, oddly calm.

"You weren't ready to see them, yet," he spoke quietly and with more control than Scorpius expected to hear.

Doubtfully, Scorpius asked, "Everything's true, then? What my friends say about you? About you and mum?"

"No, not about mum," Draco said quickly.

"But about you?"

"Scorp-"

"Don't lie. Please." Scorpius cast another glance down at the photo, then to his father, feeling distrustful of him for the first time in his life.

Draco knelt down in front of his son and exhaled, looking Scorpius in the eye.

"What do they say about me, then?"

"Nothing you'd care to hear about," Scorpius muttered.

"Do I appear to be joking? Tell me - what do your friends say about me?"

Scorpius rubbed the back of his neck, a habit of nervousness he had inherited from his father.

Whispers passed through his head.

_"Draco Malfoy. Voldemort. Slytherin. Traitor. Death Eater. __**Killer.**__"_

_"_They call you names – lots of names. They talk about the things you've done, too. Except they're all really bad things and I don't want to believe them," he confessed. His stomach felt sick from thinking about the rumors again.

Draco's expression softened, and he pulled the photo away from his son's pale fingers. "I know you don't want to believe them, Scorp –"

Firmly, "I don't."

" – And I'm not saying you should. There are people who will say some pretty bad things about us. But you deserve to know why."

"You were a Death Eater, dad, I get it. But you weren't like _them_," Scorpius nodded towards the photo in his father's hands, feeling disgusted. "…Were you?"

"I…no, I didn't do the things they did," Draco said, immersed in the details of the image. "But my intentions weren't that heroic, either. I was…lost."

Scorpius nodded faintly.

"So did you actually use the – the Unforgivables when you were younger?"

Draco threw a sharp glance at his son. "What did I tell you about – "

"I know, I know, but you said you'd be honest with me."

Draco stared into his son's innocent blue eyes, so much unlike his own, so much unlike Lucius'.

He had tried so hard to shelter him from the ugly truth, but was it really better this way? Keeping him in the dark, when there was so much that he was entitled to know?

He didn't deserve this burden at such a young age.

Another beat, and Draco relented.

"I did."

The young Malfoy was silent.

Draco hesitated, unsure how to handle his son's blank reaction.

"Are you angry with me?"

"…No."

Because he wasn't. Because he understood that his father was _not _the same person he had been before, and was not the same as those bloodstained people in the photograph.

"And…I still don't think you were a bad person. I think you just had a lot of people in your life that made you do bad things."

Draco blinked in surprise, struck by the wisdom in the child's statement.

"Is that so?" he murmured.

Scorpius tentatively scooted closer to where his father sat, and stuck out his hand. Bemused, Draco took it, and Scorpius led him into an odd little handshake. "I, Scorpius Abraxas Malfoy, solemnly swear that…that I don't care about all that stuff because that was a long time ago and I know you're a good guy now and cooler than all my friends' dads."

Draco laughed, and Scorpius grinned happily. It was hard to get his father to laugh sometimes, even though it sounded really nice.

"But you have to tell me the truth from now on," Scorpius added.

"Of course." Draco replied, still amazed by his son's capacity to forgive; to _love. _"Just…don't let it get to you when you start school this year –"

"I know, dad. I won't."

"Good." Draco stood up and dusted his robes, and Scorpius did this same. "Now, tell you what, how about we go out to Diagon Alley and get those new robes your mum's been fussing over?"

"Do we _have _to –"

"And visit Honeydukes afterwards?"

Scorpius' face lit up, though he tried to cover up with a nonchalant "Deal."

Draco chuckled at his son's inherited skills, and together they left the lonely attic, with its dusty wooden floorboards and priceless magical artifacts that held too many dark secrets to deal with at once.

And in the center, between two spots where the fine layer of dust had been disrupted, laid a black and white photograph depicting a sneering group of Death Eaters, forgotten – left to fade as nothing but a memory.


End file.
